As I Remember, Chapter 25

CHAPTER 25

      The new Kitty Kat factory would be in Mountain Home. A small town about forty miles south of Boise. We turned the deal over to them completely. Let one of them be called this awful name. I preferred the old one that had been tacked on me. THE SAD SACK, WITH THE BAD BACK.

      There are a few more things that come to my mind that I should tell about before I move on with the story. Some more things that happened back in Emmett.

      Before we left there, Gertrude and Stanley were married. They were very much in love and I was sure they would go a long ways together. They made a lovely couple. Our boy Bill has always been a hard one for me to figure out. He always was and still is, an independent cuss. Wants to live his own life.

      When he was sixteen, he joined the Paratroopers. Forged his birth certificate to eighteen and in he went. After about a year or so, he got tired of that branch of the service. He decided he wanted out. Finally he made it. Proved that he was still only seventeen. After he become eighteen, he once more went back into the armed service. This time a different branch. He and Dell’s boy Phil, were great buddies. They made quite a pair. I don’t think they fought any more after that time back on Pumpkin Ridge. They were full of mischief. Back when they were in grade school over in Emmett, they pulled one that I will never forget. I will tell about it.

      There was an old boy by the name of Katz that lived close to the big canal. He was real old and I guess he was alone and had nothing to live for. He decided to end it all. He wrote a suicide note. Took off all his clothes, laid his pocket book and false teeth on the ditch bank and jumped in. On their way to school, Bill and Phil, found the things that he had left. I don’t think they bothered to read the note, they just divided up the spoils. Mainly the pocket book with a few dollars in it and the false teeth. I never learned exactly how they decided who got what, but Bill ended up with the money and Phil, with the false teeth. Phil gave the choppers a good scrubbing with the ditch water and sand, then tried them in his mouth over his own teeth. I guess he really looked horrible. With these, he would have a lot of fun. That day in school, whenever the teacher would turn her back, Phil would slip the teeth in his mouth and grin at the rest of the class. Some of the girls would scream. He got by with this for a while, then the teacher caught him. She took the teeth and threw them into the incinerator. Phil confessed as to what happened. He and Bill were sent to the principal’s office. He called Dell and me. And poor old Katz was buried without his teeth.